Defender of Rome Read Free Page A

stabbing or slicing. Culleo was short and wide, but his build disguised his speed, which was usually enough to frighten other men into dying quietly. Unless a lesson had to be taught he preferred to attack from behind because it was quicker and simpler. In Subura, or at least in the streets around the Silver Mullet, he was the wolf and any man who didn’t belong was his prey.
    The torch Valerius carried attracted Culleo like a moth to the flame. Why would a drunk carry a torch when he could bounce home off the walls he knew as intimately as his mother’s left tit? Once they had spotted him he was theirs. A tall man, though he crouched and tried to hide it, dressed in an expensive cloak. A fool then. Any cloak waved about the Subura was asking to be stolen and a man with a cloak would have other things worth stealing, even if it was only his clothes and his shoes. There was something else, too. From a dozen paces away Culleo’s sharp eyes had noted the little details another man’s might not: the way the fool carried himself, the slight favouring of his right side, and the strong jaw and sharp planes of his face. The description could have fitted twenty other men – apart from one important detail that could easily be hidden beneath the cloak, but Culleo had sensed. Word had been passed down to him from the invisible network that all the gangs knew to obey. Even the wolf must give up a proportion of his kill to the hungry tiger. Culleo knew that if you were to survive in the Subura ‘they’ were to be answered to above all others. He smiled, revealing a carnage of rotting teeth; someone wanted this man dead and was willing to pay handsomely for it.
    He studied his victim’s speed and direction, knowing the cloaked man would increase his pace once he was past the open courtyard. Who would walk slowly through the Subura at night? ‘Iugolo? Fimus?’ He called two of his men from the tavern, one older and massive, with a single eye and a red, weeping socket, and the other wiry, deceptively boyish and, even for the Subura, remarkably dirty. ‘Take the back road by the tannery and cut him off before Tiburtina. If we’re quick we can catch him at the Alley of the Poxed Tart. Don’t move until I get there with the Greek.’ Four against one: was it enough? He could gather more men but it would take time to rouse them from their beds and sober them up. By then the target might be gone. It was enough. The mark was a fool. A sheep to be shorn. No, he grinned to himself, a lamb to be slaughtered.
    Valerius moved fast after he passed the inn, but his eyes never stopped searching for danger. The street narrowed again and the flickering orange torchlight bounced from filth-spattered walls creating the illusion of constant movement, so his senses continually reacted to non-existent threats. A pair of almond-shaped eyes glowed eerily at him from a doorway. Strange how a rat’s eyes reflected red in the torchlight, yet the cat’s which hunted it were like luminous emeralds.
    He almost didn’t see the movement.
    It was just the merest glint of light on metal fifty paces ahead in a place and at a height where there should be none. His breathing quickened. He willed himself to be calm, sought the stillness which had always been his before battle. Let it build slowly, a heartbeat at a time; the countdown to violence. His muscles tensed and his senses sharpened. How many of them? It didn’t matter. He couldn’t run. This was their territory and they would hunt him down in seconds. But they didn’t know he’d seen them and that meant, at least for the moment, they and not he were the hunted. He maintained his pace but his fingers tightened on his sword hilt.
    When they stepped into the street he could have laughed aloud. Only two? A skinny feral child with a gap-toothed snarl, armed with what appeared to be a leatherworker’s awl, and a one-eyed giant wielding a nailed cudgel that was like a toy in his massive hands. Did they